Sechelt council lobbied for airport funds, mining royalties, and repairs to Highway 101 at this year's Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) Convention held last week in Vancouver.
"We work really hard on the behalf of the people of Sechelt to try to get these things done and we'll keep pressing if we have to because it's important," Sechelt Mayor Darren Inkster said.
Over the course of the convention, the District of Sechelt put two motions forward, both of which passed. The first, concerned mining.
"We would love to see an adjacency benefit to communities on mining royalties, so that communities benefit from mines that are close by because those communities will be most affected," he said, emphasizing, however, that the District is not looking for a cut from Sechelt Indian Band royalties.
The second motion, asked the federal and provincial governments to place a higher priority on funding municipal airports.
"We have an airport that's underdeveloped and we're not expecting the local citizens to pay a lot of money towards that," he said. "So what we need to do is work with the provincial and federal governments to get funding. I think we'll keep beating that drum."
Sechelt council also participated in a number of ministerial meetings, both about airport funding and about repairs to Highway 101.
Sechelt councillors met with Pat Bell, Minister of Forests and Range, to discuss securing control of the already-cleared lands around the airport which are currently controlled by the province. Sechelt would like to see the lands leased for light industrial use, with that revenue going towards the airport, Inkster said.
Council also met with Shirley Bond, Minister of Transportation to firm up the provincial government's commitment on Highway 101 safety concerns. In March, he said, the District, working with the province, developed a priority list which divides Highway 101 repairs into "bite-sized" pieces.
"And we thought [the repairs] would be partly done in the summer, the first one or two, and nothing was done," he said. "We don't know what happened with that. We had thought we had a commitment and [at the UBCM ministerial meeting] the province was surprised that no work had been done on the committed areas that we had agreed to."
Also in the course of the convention, Inkster said he ran for a position as director-at-large with UBCM.
"One of the things that we're working on is putting Sechelt more on the map and getting a lot of our interests forward so that people know what we stand for," he said. "And [running for director-at-large] was one of the things that I thought I needed to do to let everyone know who Sechelt is. Just so that we're recognized."
Inkster said he has not yet heard the results of the vote, but called it a "tough race."
